“No Player Bigger than the Team”
About five years ago, the soccer club that I support, Liverpool, were in the midst of a drought. It had been nearly thirty years since the last time they had won the English Premier League. This dry spell was not quite of the magnitude of, say, the Boston Red Sox going 86 years without a World Series. But for Liverpool fans who were accustomed to greatness, it was discouraging. It didn’t help that their noisy neighbors, their rivals Manchester United, had won more than a handful of titles in the meanwhile.
Liverpool’s best player at the time was Philippe Coutinho, a Brazilian international. And if you know anything about soccer, you know that those Brazilians are pretty good. They’re practically born with a ball at their feet. If a soccer player’s name ends with that special ending “-inho”—like Robinho or Ronaldinho or Fernandinho—you know they’re going to be magicians with the ball, maestros conducting the orchestra. Many Liverpool fans loved Coutinho and hoped that he would be the one to bring back a league title to Liverpool. They were heartbroken when the famous Spanish club Barcelona came along with a record offer, £142 million, and Coutinho’s head was turned. He left. Many Liverpool fans saw this as a nail in the coffin. “We will always be a selling club,” they said. “Our best players will always be stolen by the giants. There’s no title in our future.”
But as it would turn out, Coutinho’s departure was the final piece to Liverpool’s puzzle. Without having all their hopes pinned on one player, the team began to share responsibility more evenly. The front three players all blossomed together and began to score buckets of goals. In 2019, Liverpool won the European title, called the Champions League. And the following year, they won the national title, called the Premier League. They were back. And all without Coutinho.
Hindsight, of course, is 20-20, and many fans knowingly nodded their heads and uttered that old sports adage, “There’s no player bigger than the team.” And even though these fans may have been the same ones who complained when Coutinho left, there’s no arguing with the truth of that proverb. What matters most in a team sport is not the magic of an individual but the collective performance of the team.
“The Servant of the Lord”
It’s a truth that translates pretty well into the broader playing field of life. What matters most is not the power or greatness of a leader, but the collective responsibility and integrity of the people. Our scripture today tells the story of Moses’ death, and on the surface it can read a little bit like hero worship. “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses… He was unequaled…for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that [he] performed in the sight of all Israel” (Deut 34:10-12). But if we read a bit more closely, we might discover an entirely different impression, namely that scripture is actually downplaying the individual significance of Moses.
To begin, we have God’s sobering reminder to Moses, “You shall not cross over there” (34:4). God gently leaves it at that, but we might remember the reason for Moses’ non-entry. Earlier he had struck the rock in self-righteous anger, shaming the Israelites and not giving glory and thanks to God for the provision of water (cf. Num 20:1-13, 24b). In other words, Moses is human too. God’s decree that Moses should not enter the Promised Land may still feel inscrutable, given all he’s done, but perhaps part of the reason is to remind the people of Israel that, well, no player is bigger than the team. Moses has led Israel in so many commendable ways. But at the end of the day, Israel will not be able to look back on its history and say, “Moses led us into the Promised Land.” No, as great as he was, he too would die in the wilderness like the rest of his generation.
Immediately after God’s decree, the narrator refers to Moses as “the servant of the Lord” (Deut 34:5). It is a subtle descriptor but significant. Rarely is there a mention of Moses without a mention of the Lord, and in this particular case, their relationship is made clear. Moses is a servant. His greatness is a matter of his servant’s disposition. And this is his final act of obedience. He dies, we are told, “at the Lord’s command” (Deut 34:5). It is one thing to die at God’s command when the body is completely failing and craves its final rest. But Moses, the narrator tells us, is healthy: “His sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated” (Deut 34:7). To die in this state, is probably not an easy obedience for Moses. Yet he is ever God’s servant. And he trusts that death is a part of God’s life—even without any promise of an afterlife. A couple millennia later, Francis of Assisi will tenderly sing, “Praised be you, my Lord, through our sister Death, from whom no one can escape.” Only a servant of life, only someone who really trusts in the Creator, could see goodness in death.
“No One Knows His Burial Place”
After Moses dies, we learn that “no one knows his burial place to this day” (Deut 34:6). It is easy to overlook the importance of this notice. In the Old Testament, people commonly build altars or pillars to commemorate the site of an important encounter, whether it is a revelation of God or a death. For instance, when Rachel dies, the storyteller says, “Jacob set up a pillar at her grave; it is the pillar of Rachel’s tomb, which is there to this day” (Gen 35:20). The absence of a burial place for Israel’s greatest leader is incredibly conspicuous. Surely someone would have set up a pillar, right? The implication here is that God has actually prevented such a commemoration.
If we go back to the beginning of today’s scripture, we see that God has led Moses up a mountain, presumably alone, to show him the Promised Land. Then Moses dies at the Lord’s command. What happens next is almost completely lost in our English translation. Our translation says, “He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab.” But the original Hebrew says this: “He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab” (Deut 34:6). Who buried Moses? The only other character in this passage is God. The suggestion is that God buries Moses in secret on purpose so that no one will know his burial place. Why? God wants to guard against that human tendency to worship heroes, which tends to weaken our own sense of responsibility and integrity.
In ancient Israel, there seems to have been a special concern against the worship of the dead, which was common in neighboring cultures. For instance, the passage in Leviticus against making gashes or marks in one’s own body has nothing to do with tattoos or the importance of honoring one’s body. It has to do with a practice that was commonly performed in the worship of the dead. God is concerned there that people will attribute too much significance to a person who is gone and at the same time ignore the very source of that person’s life. To worship the dead is to miss out on life. And so God quietly, inconspicuously buries Moses away from the sight of the people.
The Memory of Moses Is the Memory of God
Next Sunday is All Saints Sunday, when we remember our loved ones who have passed. Our memory of them, however, is not limited to the deeds they did or the words they said. Our memory of them is inflected with gratitude, recognizing that who they were is inextricably connected with who God is. We cannot look at their life and not see God. Whether it was their laughter and a spirit of hope, or their quiet demeanor and a spirit of trust, or their ability to move on and a spirit of forgiveness—we see in them the spirit of God, and we know that the God of the living is with them still and they still live in God (cf. Matt 22:31-32). And while all of this does not erase our grief, because they are gone in a very real way, it does somehow accompany and perhaps even transcend our grief, because they are also still here in a very real way, in the abiding presence and love of God. We can say with today’s lectionary psalm, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” You are our home at all times.
That line in today’s scripture that sounds a little bit like hero worship now sounds different to me: “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face” (Deut 34:10). The memory of Moses is in fact the memory of God—the God who gave life to Moses and who called Moses and who worked wonderful deeds through Moses, all because God knew Moses. And the good news we have in Christ, is that this extraordinarily special relationship between God and Moses is in fact the relationship we all enjoy with God if we open ourselves up to it, if we make ourselves, like Moses, a servant of life and the God of life. We and Moses are made of the same stuff. We are human, frail and finite, and we are caught up in an extraordinary loving relationship with the Creator.
The translation of our scripture today says that Moses dies “at the Lord’s command.” The original Hebrew is more literally rendered that Moses dies “at the mouth of the Lord.” A rabbinic tradition expounds on this scene to suggest that when Moses breathed his last, it was in fact God kissing Moses, drawing from him the same breath that God had earlier breathed into him. Maybe it’s just a fanciful interpretation, but it resonates with my faith in a God who calls us his own. And so I trust that this intimacy with God that Moses knows in his last moments, is for all of us. God is our home, now and forever, as the Psalmist says.
And so I’m left with a lot to ponder. And while this pondering is on death, it is also fundamentally on life and the God of life. When I remember loved ones passed, how am I remembering God? How is God’s life manifest among theirs? And what about me? How is God’s life being manifest within my life? When people remember me, how will they be remembering God?
Prayer
God of life,Whose love puts on quite a show
In Moses, your servant,
But also in others whom we have known
…
Open our eyes to see,
Beyond the surface,
Your Spirit doing great things
In our loved ones, in strangers, in enemies even…
And in us.
In Christ, who calls us your beloved children: Amen.
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